Saturday, 31 October 2015

Who Reviews The Woman Who Lived by Jeffrey Zyra

Who Reviews: The Woman
Who Lived

Written by Catherine Tregenna

Reviewed by Jeffrey Zyra

“I just wanted to save
a terrified young woman’s life.”

The Woman Who Lived is the second part of The Girl Who Died but in a roundabout
way that it isn’t the continuation of a story that is taking place but instead
the continuation of a characters story.
In The Girl Who Died we were introduced to Ashildr who ends up
dying. The Doctor brings her back by
using an alien med kit. Now Ashildr is
immortal and The Doctor runs into her again in 1651 and she has now changed and
in fact is a Highwayman known as The
Knightmare but more to the fact that her persona and her attitude towards
life in general has changed. This
disturbs The Doctor and more worrying is that he is responsible for this.

I liked The Woman Who Lived more than I did The Girl Who Died. While The
Girl Who Died was a bit too silly and just didn’t click for me I did get
what they were trying to do in The Woman
Who Lived. They mostly told a story
about the consequences of The Doctor’s actions and how it affects those he helps. In this case we see what happens to
Ashildr. She becomes bitter and jaded as
the people she loves grow old and die or in the case of her children die of
disease while she is powerless to help them.
I enjoyed this part of the story and it is good to have a story that
explores what happens when The Doctor interferes. Doctor Who should have more stories like this
because it can’t be all roses and sunshine after he messes with people’s lives.

I really
enjoyed seeing an episode with Peter Capaldi going solo. Once Jenna Coleman leaves this series I
wouldn’t mind seeing him go sole for a while before they pair him up with the
new companion. It just shows how great
an actor Peter Capaldi is as he can carry the show on his own without a
companion to bounce off of. It does help
that his co-star is very talented and one of the better young actresses around -
Maisie Williams. The chemistry between
the two was fantastic and it is a shame she is on Game of Thrones as it would
be good to see them paired up again.
Well I think they will as I do not think Ashildr’s story is over.

With that
being said the clues are all there for Ashildr’s return including the obvious
selfie picture from Clara. It seemed
that Ashildr knew too much about The Doctor without him telling her about
it. She obviously hit a cord with The
Doctor especially the way she talked about the past companions and mainly Clara
saying will she turn to dust also. There
is a lot here to suggest that she will be coming back and I’m going to guess we
will see her again in Series 9.

What I did
not care for was that in other words a pretty decent story so far was the
conclusion. It just went to pieces when
they decided that they needed a protagonist.
So Lenny the Lion decides that he needs to open a rift and to do that
they need Rufus Hound’s character to die to open it. Not a bad set up as Sam Swift was introduced
into the story earlier on and so it made sense for him to get captured. But it just seemed rushed to get to a
conclusion and too convenient to use the other medi kit to save him. Sometimes
I just wish there was more science in the science fiction and not the mediocre
mumble jumble explanation.

In all, the
whole story The Girl Who Died/The Woman
Who Lived was just mediocre and did not do all that much for me. While the story did have two writers you were
given two different styles for this story and it did work for the most
part. While The Woman Who Died was the stronger of the two stories it failed in
the fact that the ending was uninspiring.
In its favor it did set up a storyline for later in the series and
something for the fans to speculate on.
Maisie Williams was a superb guest star and it will be good to see her
return. The Woman Who Lived did give us an interesting plotline one that is
rarely used in Doctor Who which I enjoyed and hope we see more of in the
future.